A weeklong fire that tore through a massive cold-storage warehouse in Boyle Heights is out, but cleanup has brought a new reality: rotting meat, filthy water, and a heavy smell drifting from the damaged Lineage facility.
When the smoke cleared outside the Lineage warehouse in Boyle Heights on Thursday morning, it didn’t bring relief. The air was already being replaced by something harder to ignore—spoiling food. filthy water. and a stench rising from a hulking shell that firefighters have been drenching since flames erupted from the roof on June 17.
Thick foam from the building’s insulation floated by on streams leaking from the structure, while three dump trucks carried waste away. Still, firefighters said it would be days before crews could access the burned-out interior.
Wendy Ramirez, 45, fled the area last week with her father-in-law, Jaime Ramirez, 69, when the smoke became unbearable. They returned Thursday to check on their house and were met by the smell.
“Now you can smell the rotting food,” Wendy Ramirez said. She has two children with asthma, and she stayed with relatives during the fire.
In the first days after the fire, officials raised concerns that unrefrigerated food might become so rancid as to create a biohazard risk. That threat was eventually eliminated after the temperature was stabilized. But smaller dangers tied to the lingering odor persist.
Jaime Ramirez said he brought a mask when he returned in case there was still smoke, only to find he needed it for the smell instead. He and other neighbors worried the rancid food could draw rats and create further hazards for residents who have not yet found it safe to come back.
On the third day of the fire, Ramirez said he woke up with a runny nose, sore throat, and chapped lips.
The warehouse sits in an area that is home to at least 31. 700 workers. a data analysis by researchers at UCLA found. Roughly 8 in 10 of those workers are Latino. Nearly half earn less than Los Angeles County’s very-low-income threshold. and more than half may have limited access to paid leave. health coverage. or the ability to work remotely. the analysis found.
Arturo Vargas Bustamante, research director at the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute, said those realities mean many people couldn’t simply stay home or flee to avoid smoke exposure.
He said Boyle Heights has a long history of being selected for potentially harmful infrastructure such as warehouses and factories, with residents often lacking resources to blunt long-term health impacts.
“But I think that putting some numbers into these assumptions is important,” Bustamante said. “So that we can have an expectation of who are the most affected and we can have an idea of what type of policies need to be implemented to give relief to these populations.”
An Eastside community organizer with East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice. Mark Lopez. described the neighborhood as “ground zero for environmental racism in Los Angeles. ” pointing to a recent oil spill. the soil-contaminating legacy of the shuttered Exide battery recycling plant. and the preponderance of rail yards and freeways.
“On any given day the air is unhealthy to breathe and so of course when you bring a disaster into it, it only exacerbates the existing issues,” Lopez said.
Lopez said statements by public officials have minimized the potential health impacts of the heavy smoke. At times, the plume overwhelmed areas from central Los Angeles to the San Gabriel Valley with fine particulate matter—soot. When inhaled, those microscopic particles can enter the lungs and bloodstream, potentially causing swelling and inflammation. Prolonged or acute exposure to smoke has been linked to heart attacks, strokes, and other serious respiratory illnesses.
As of 10 a.m. Thursday, the South Coast Air Quality Management District monitors and low-cost sensors near the warehouse weren’t detecting elevated levels of particulate pollution from the fire, regulators said.
Even so, community members and advocates said the risk doesn’t end with what’s visible in the sky. Lopez said residents remain concerned about contaminated homes and long-term health effects.
“The true impacts aren’t what we all saw in the sky,” he said. “It’s what we’re going to see at our doctors’ visits in the years to come.”
On Thursday, firefighters continued to shoot water into the building, where tall metal stacks of food could be seen through the remains of a wall that was knocked down so crews could fight flames inside.
Capt. Anthony Tubbs with the Los Angeles Fire Department said the fire was no longer at risk of growing. but it would still be a couple of days before it stops smoldering. Fire officials expect to hand the building back to the tenant. Lineage. and to the owner of the building on Friday. Los Angeles Fire Chief Jaime E. Moore said.
A department spokesperson said a smaller number of firefighters would remain on scene to monitor for hot spots and possibly continue shooting water and debris as a precaution.
Moore said the owner and lessee will bear responsibility for clearing debris and mitigating some of the effects of the fire and its aftermath, including looking for ways to mitigate debris flowing out of the warehouse and the smell emitted by the rotting food.
Even beyond the burned contents of the warehouse, the article of record notes that millions of pounds of food are also being stored in a portion of the building that was untouched by the fire.
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health said in a statement that public health officials will help with cleanup and recovery by responding to community health concerns, including vermin complaints, and by helping ensure spoiled food is properly removed and disposed of.
Times staff writer Tony Briscoe contributed to this report.
Boyle Heights Lineage warehouse fire rotting meat cleanup Los Angeles Fire Department South Coast Air Quality Management District UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute environmental justice asthma residents soot particulate pollution Los Angeles County Department of Public Health